Gov’t Looking to Develop National Agriculture Resilience Plan by April 2025

Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, has issued instructions for the development of a national plan by April 2025, to build resilience within the agriculture sector.

The directive, which has been relayed to Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, Hon. Floyd Green, comes as the Prime Minister challenges the sector’s stakeholders to adopt a culture of resilience.

This is against the background of the recent onslaught by Hurricane Beryl and the nuisances of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and other adversities that have been plaguing the industry.

Speaking during the Denbigh Agricultural, Industrial and Food Show in Clarendon on Tuesday (August 6), Mr. Holness said the instruction to Minister Green forms part of Jamaica’s food security and resilience.

Consequently, the Prime Minister said the national plan would include “increasing the local production of goods, here in Jamaica, using Jamaican input and Jamaican resources”.

Additionally, he informed, the plan is intended “to increase our processing capabilities for food, to increase our storage capabilities for food [and] to increase the financing available to small and medium-sized and large farmers, because we must start to treat agriculture as a business and not only as a passion”.

The Prime Minister advised that Minister Green has commenced work on the plan and has secured funding to recruit a consultant.

Meanwhile, Mr. Holness maintains that Jamaica, though small, is brave in facing challenges and overcoming them.

“We are a resilient people. Resilience is the nature of an entity to be able to quickly recover from a shock, adversity, a disaster, [or] a crisis, but not just to recover from it but to recover stronger,” he explained.

Consequently, Mr. Holness urged farmers to create opportunities from crises and “to change the way how we were doing things before, to bring in new ways of doing things that [are] better than the old ways”.

“So, we must not look upon challenges and adversity with fear. What we must do, as a resilient people who naturally believe in our ‘tallawahness’, is that we must prepare for adversity,” he added.

The Prime Minister said that in their preparations to be resilient, farmers should store and save for periods when food supplies may decrease, as well as build sound infrastructure to safeguard against disasters.

Tuesday’s Denbigh show marked the 70th anniversary of the historic event, which is noted to be the largest of its kind in the English-Speaking Caribbean.

It coincided with the 62nd Anniversary of Jamaica’s attaining political independence from Great Britain on August 6, 1962.

Several dignitaries and officials locally and regionally were in attendance, including Premier of the Cayman Islands, Hon. Juliana O’Connor Connolly.